


Defeating Zero

by swishy



Series: Zero 'Verse [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Eating Disorders, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swishy/pseuds/swishy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost nothing about staying sober and alive feels like victory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defeating Zero

**Author's Note:**

> This is an epilogue more than anything. But actually, getting the man shouldn't be part of "Escaping Zero", so I made it a separate fic. You should have read Approaching / Escaping Zero, though.

Almost nothing about staying sober and alive feels like victory.

It doesn’t feel like victory when Grantaire starts taking his friends on food dates, in which he spills his secrets and shows them all the best places for the respective kind of food, and then goes on to date the food while the friend he brought sits with him so he won’t stand up and escape.

It actually does feel like dating, though, the indulging in good food again: Nervous and strained at first – he doesn’t taste much of the blueberry muffins that he introduces Jehan to, although both his memory and Jehan are very adamant about the assessment that these are the very best muffins the town has to offer.

But with time, the strain fades, and Grantaire starts looking forward to the dates – still only taking polite little bites from his peanut-curry so that the taste won’t swamp his mouth, while Bahorel opposite him eats like he’s starving – but he starts enjoying it again. It’s a frail sense of enjoyment, but Grantaire will take what he can get.

At some point, Grantaire notices that food has stopped being an issue to him. It isn’t quite back to normal, but he doesn’t have to remind himself to eat again, he doesn’t have to look at the clock to know whether he’s hungry, and most importantly, he’s back to indulging in food for the taste’s sake rather than to please a friend.

When he notices, he’s in the middle of a bite of sushi, sitting next to Combeferre, who is currently immerged in The Time Traveler’s Wife. He doesn’t even stop chewing; it’s very anticlimactic, the whole affair.

What feels even less like victory, though, is the not drinking part, because Grantaire refuses to be impressed by the fact that he managed to _refrain_ from doing something _._ _A fucking plus, loser, you didn’t give in to the urge to make yourself into even more of a useless idiot than you already are. Did you expect a medal? Babies manage that one better than you do._

He keeps at it, though, because the one time he doesn’t resist the urge to get smashed makes him feel so _unbearably_ disgusting that he can’t get himself to attend the meetings for a whole week. Which in turn only serves to unsettle him more, because he _needs_ his daily fix of human contact, as he has found out at age fifteen, and additionally worries his friends to the point where they all seek him out on their own.

He doesn’t want to tell them, because that way the shame could stay his own, the mistake would stay his rather than additionally temper with their feelings. It’s a habit, a version of damage containment, because it keeps the damage limited to himself – except that his friends won’t let him.

So he talks, and gets furrowed brows and sympathetic winces and a resounding “crap!” in return. All in all, it could have been worse.

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

Or more rewarding.

Getting himself a job doesn’t feel like victory either. But it pays the bills, and Grantaire gets along with his colleagues and his boss alright, and that’s all he wants. He wouldn’t know what to do with more money anyway; years as a poor student have effectively extinguished his desire for anything even remotely expensive. What he doesn’t spend, he saves, and sometimes he stares at the rising number on his bank account with a restless feeling of _what do I do with that?_

He saves it for the vague idea of a trip to Rome, to Venice, to Berlin, to London. But he doesn’t outright plan for it, because his friends are mostly students that can barely afford to pay their bills, and Grantaire doesn’t feel like traveling alone.

He writes up scathing and sarcastic articles in his free time, and sometimes he gets to sell one of them to a newspaper.

His drawings fill drawers, but most of the time, he feels less than inspired.

It’s routine, and it’s bearable, but it isn’t victory.

The only thing that makes his life less than boring is that one day he makes the decision to take up ballet again, and he spends hours in the midst of pudgy or lanky teenage girls who are more graceful and more precise and more ambitious than he is, but he doesn’t mind. It takes the edge off the particularly beastly days that make him want to curl up underneath his bed, and besides, he gets along quite well with the girls.

The way things are with Enjolras isn’t victory either – not _quite_. It’s mostly confusion, because he’s back to watching Enjolras, but Enjolras watches him back now. Sometimes he wonders if Enjolras meant what he said about liking him.

Sometimes he doesn’t wonder, because Enjolras tries very hard indeed to show him that he cares.

They argue, although it takes them a while to find their usual rhythm, and even then there’s the underlying note of ‘your opinion is appreciated’ that wasn’t there before. Enjolras texts him at least once a day to keep him updated on all things rebellious, and be in turn told about Grantaire’s day.

He invites Grantaire over the way he does with Combeferre or Courfeyrac, for a deliciously lazy evening spent watching movies they both have seen hundreds of times and one-upping each other with trivia from the set and imagery used. Grantaire loves it like he loves the small tender things that life offers him sometimes without explanation and for no apparent reason other than that if shit happens, then so do good things.

Grantaire meets his reflection’s eyes in the bathroom mirror of Enjolras’ flat and doesn’t clench his teeth or frown at it. There’s a patch of red and gray leaning in the doorway, and Grantaire doesn’t question its presence in his life, nor his in Enjolras’. It’s not victory, but it’s a warm feeling cozying up to him, and that’s more than enough.

"You're making me smile," Enjolras says abruptly into the silence between them.

Grantaire turns around, toothbrush in his mouth, to where Enjolras is standing in the doorframe, and yes, there's a smile. It's an odd little thing, possibly because Grantaire isn't used to seeing it on Enjolras' face, and it's not tired or encouraging or careful. Something to cross off the list, Grantaire thinks.

"You've been doing that for a while," Enjolras adds, "When you're sleeping, or smiling, or drawing, or cooking. I've kept it from you out of habit, I suppose, but I think you deserve to know."

His thin gray nightshirt exposes a bit of pale skin where it rides up at his hip, and Grantaire wonders if Enjolras’ skin is cold like the terrifying cruelty he’s capable of emitting, or hot like the righteous fury of his speeches. He wonders if his breath is minty cool like the frosty looks he used to send Grantaire’s way sometimes, or hot like his emotional outbursts.

And then it’s more than wonder, it’s a desperate need to know that has Grantaire say: “Hold out your hand.”

Enjolras, incredibly, impossibly, obliges.

Grantaire touches the tips of his fingers to the silken skin on the inside of Enjolras’ wrist. (It’s hot, because of course it is, and how could he ever doubt it? Enjolras’ every movement is fuelled by passion and tinged red with anger.) And then, because he’s realized that there’s nothing stopping him, he raises his hand to Enjolras lips, only inches from touching them. Enjolras’ breath is hot as well, and Grantaire doesn’t keep himself from imagining it ragged and in short gasps and ghosting over his own lips.

It takes a lot of willpower to pull away and take a step back.

(Grantaire is short on willpower at the moment.)

“Are my features proving to be to your satisfaction?” Enjolras asks, and there’s an underlying tone of compliant patience that doesn’t fit into the red-hot picture Grantaire has been painting of him.

“Yes,” he breathes, and moves to brush past him and out of the bathroom, but Enjolras catches hold of his wrist, and Grantaire is fresh out of willpower.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Enjolras warns, and instead of saying no, Grantaire just tilts back his head and lets him, and out of all the things he could be proud of, this is the one that actually feels a little bit like victory.


End file.
